The Coinbase exchange said that as a result of data leakage in December 2024, attackers received data from 69,461 users. The company told about this in a notification for the authorities of the state of Maine.
Hackers demanded $ 20 million, threatening to publish stolen information in the darknet. They bribed the employees of the support service abroad to gain access to systemic data.
Coinbase specified that the incident affected less than 1% of active users. The flowed data included the name, address and email (KYC -information), but did not affect passwords, private keys or funds in the accounts.
The exchange estimated the costs of resolving the incident and compensation for users of $ 180-400 million. The company created a prize fund for $ 20 million to assist in the search for attackers, turned to law enforcement agencies and transferred the investigation of employees who drained the information.
The founder of TechCrunch Michael Arrington criticized the exchange for a belated reaction. According to him, a KYC-data leak can lead to a physical threat to customers.
I am A Long Time Investor In and Champion of @coinbase. SoMething that has to be said though – This Hack – Which Includes Home Addresses and Account Balances – Will Lead to People Dying. It Probably Has Alread. The Human Cost, Denominated in Misery, Is Much Larger than the $ 400m … pic.twitter.com/rusykagh7x
– Michael Arrington 🏴☠️ (@arrington) May 19, 2025
In May, Bloomberg reported that Binance and Kraken were able to repel attacks using social engineering methods from which Coinbase suffered.
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Source: Cryptocurrency
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